July 1, 2010

The Twitter feed is Shit My Dad Says. The show is "S#*! My Dad Says." It's on CBS, so dad can't say "shit." The dad is William Shatner....

I'm not able to give a sane assessment of whether the show could possibly be any good — and I love the Twitter feed — because the jaunty music track that ran through that whole clip redirected all my energy into the struggle to retain the will to live.

Does this tell anyone other than me just how low things have sunk, now that modern serial network television is now taking cues from one of the most inane, insipid, and utterly content-thin sources of information on the internet? What's next, a show based on newspaper photo captions? I'm tellin' you, that'd have more content than freakin' Tweets would!

New series: S#*! a Chinese cook said. The TV series based on fortune cookie quotes...

Anything with Bill Shatner is instant gold. I mean the latter-day Shatner...not the 70's Star Trek Shatner. That one was in earnest. This latter-day Shatner is a self-parody. He knows it. He revels in it.

I'm not able to give a sane assessment of whether the show could possibly be any good — and I love the Twitter feed — because the jaunty music track that ran through that whole clip redirected all my energy into the struggle to retain the will to live.

This show may be more pro family than anything put on TV in 20 years. A traditional family has been a Patria which means a Fatherhood. Welcome back all you young men into the role that you were designed for.

There have been plenty of movies and shows with crusty old fathers pathetically out of touch with their sons' independent lives. What has been MIA in all the movies and TV shows is a natural respect and love of the sons toward normal fathers, with a half of an exception for the TV show Frazier.

Frasier was literally one of the 3 best shows in TV History. Uinlike Cheers, which watched every single episode grab for a greater number of cliches than the one before it, until it was a complete circle of wasted talent. How badly the writers and production team must have wanted to end Cheers and get on with real class like Frasier. But there was an audience for Cheers, and a paycheck, and so the show, in a downward quality spiral went on for at least 8 years past it's prime.

@DBQ:I don't hold out hope for the writing. What might make it appeal to me (and perhaps many) would be Shatner's hamming, and self parody (as Scott M put it).

This appeal might not overcome the painful dialog (I may join you in passing it by), but I don't think that yuck-yucks (or their quality) are the point.

The show would have to be more than a Shatner monologue though. I can only hope that it will turn into something.

Regarding groundbreaking shows:

3rd Rock and Hill Street Blues were certainly that. And I grew up on Carol Burnette! But it has been so long now... was the line "Miss Hui-g-gins?" (BTW, wasn't The Muppet Show a lovely take on the variety show? I suspect it introduced a lot of kids to the format.)

But I wonder most at the moment: What you think of Barney Miller?

@ANN: A discussion on the "ground-breaking-ness" of TV shows would be great! (If done already, change that to perennially great discussion.) Instruct us to focus on the how & why of its influence -- not of its merely being a "great show" (which would be boring.)

Tweeter eh? Hey, remember that old Travelling Wilburys song Tweeter and The Monkey Man? (Tweeter & The Monkey man were hard up for cash, they stayed up all night selling cocaine and hash....) Now that would make for a good series.

Hey, if they're going to make series out of Twitter feeds, why not Travelling WIlbury songs?

Tweeter & Monkey man series -cont-.I always wondered about the monkey man and why Jan loved him so (the reasons were unexplained). Was he a literal half man half monkey. Did he look like a monkey? Did he have a pet monkey? Was his name Monk and people added the moniker Monkey because it sounded similar. Did he have a history with monkies or a particular monkey.Was he one of the Monkees from the old show "The Monkees" (my guess Monekey Man was Peter Tork as he seemed to go nowhere after the show, thus it would be perfectly in keeping that he needed to stay up all night selling cocaine and hash, or maybe Davey Jones, because he was the cute one, and would explain why Jan loved him so "Cheer up sleepy Jan....")Point being, all of these questions could be answered with a Tweeter & The Monkey Man show. It could be a crime series, a la Wiseguy, or it could even be done as a comedy. For a surreal comedy, how about if Davey Jones played the Monkey Man as himself (albeit a fictionalized account). Kind of like John Malkovich played himself in Being John Malkovich. Only the show dovetails after the Monkees ended into Davey Jones fictionalized life as a cocaine dealer. They could even break off into Monkees songs at key points of the show (like right after they tie the Undercover cop to the tree they could break into "Last Train to Clarkesville" and have a skit with all the characters playfully jumping around in time to the song).We're talking tv gold here.

Dust Bunny wrote:The Carol Burnette show gives them all a run for their money too. Best variety show ever. Makes me laugh out loud each time I see any of the clips on YouTube.

YOu know who else laughs out loud each time I see any of the clips on You Tube? Harvey Corman. That guy was cracking up constantly on the show, most especially when TIm Conway was speaking. The show didn't even need a laugh track as it had Harvey.